Thursday, September 1, 2011

Coconut Ice Cream with Passionfruit Caramel

Remember those passionfruit caramel filled chocolates from my last post? They might have been a bit of a disaster, but the very happy outcome was that I got a great recipe for passionfruit caramel sauce. Not that this sauce was immune to the struggles I had that day. The recipe stated 'dark amber caramel' and I thought my caramel was amber but the end result was much too thin and pale. I used golden syrup instead of corn syrup, giving it a darker colour to start with, so this may have been the problem. However, golden syrup has so much more flavour than corn syrup, so it was worth having to boil the caramel for another 10 or 15 minutes after adding all the ingredients. It still wasn't thick enough at room temperature. Oh well. It was so delicious that I was really happy to have almost 500 ml left after making the chocolates. Even though I tested it almost every day, there was still enough left to do something with. I decided to make ice cream and stuck with tropical flavours to make a knockout combination. This is a simple and tasty ice cream, but it makes a very small batch. 2 cups was perfect for me, but you may want to double it.

Place the sugar, golden syrup and enough water so it’s like wet sand in a medium saucepan. Set over medium-high heat and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until dark amber in color, about 5 minutes. Use a pastry brush, dipped in water, to wash down sides of pan to prevent crystallization as the mixture boils. Remove saucepan from the heat and gradually whisk in the passion fruit puree, heavy cream and butter. Transfer to a medium bowl and let cool.

Serve warm or at room temperature with just about anything you can think of! I found this caramel sauce had a greasy mouthfeel when refrigerated, so I may skip the butter next time, and there will be a next time.

Where do you get the passion fruit puree? Really, where...I am shocked there are no eggs in the ice cream, but am definitely going to give this a go as the flavours are so exotic and I will pretend I am on a holiday in Hawaii when I eat it.:)V

Looks great! Glad you were able to find such a beautiful use for that passionfruit caramel. Btw, I've been meaning to ask you: I see you use a lot of passionfruit puree in your recipes. Do you puree fresh fruit, or can you by it prepared? I've only tried to work with fresh passionfruit a few times, and I never know how to pick them, they're always very sour. But I love passionfruit flavour, so any pointers would be hugely appreciated!